


Star Trek: DS9, Season 7, Episode 4, Take Me Out to the Holosuite

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s07e04 Take Me Out to the Holosuite, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 07, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23599699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.
Kudos: 1





	Star Trek: DS9, Season 7, Episode 4, Take Me Out to the Holosuite

Open to Sisko in his ready room. Kira pages to tell him a Captain Solok is here to see him. Looking more murderous than he ever has, including times when he’s been in the presence of actual enemies such as the Jem'Hadar, Sisko tells her to send him in.

A smirking Vulcan comes in. His smug reply to Sisko’s barely restrained spit-filled greeting is, “Your welcome is acknowledged.”

They establish it’s been over a decade since they saw one another, and Sisko is taking whatever happened between him and Solok to a completely new level of scathing dislike. He’s literally talked to Founders, enemy Cardassians and Klingons, and villains of the week with less barely suppressed venom than he’s currently directing toward Solok.

Granted, Solok is unnervingly smug. He might be able to give T’Pol a run for her latinum.

Solok gives him a list of repairs for Solok’s ship, and they all but drop their pants and whip out a tricorder as they talk about the respective medals they’ve been awarded and the dangerous action they’ve endured during the war. Sisko unhappily says it’ll take a week for Solok’s repairs to be done, and Solok flat out makes speciesist remarks in regards to humans.

He doesn’t even have T’Pol’s excuse of being assigned to babysit a ship of humans, whom, in all honesty, most really were irredeemable jerks.

Then, instead of directly challenging Sisko, Solok passive-aggressively brings up his need for a holosuite for a program he and his senior officers have been enjoying. He adds Sisko might find it interesting due to it being based on an Earth game.

“And what game would that be,” Sisko inquires.

The next scene is of the two captains entering the bridge. Solok wanders off, and Sisko orders Kira to assemble all the senior staff together.

Assumingly, Nog is among said senior staff.

In truth, Nog’s arc throughout the series is awesome. He starts out a mischievous little boy, and through his friendship with Jake and his own intrinsically good nature, he starts to realise he can better himself and eagerly throws himself into doing so. He faces cruel realities of life no sentient being should have to face, becomes a man, and though he loses a lot, he ends the series as a good one. Though he’s been broken, he isn’t a broken man, he’s merely one who has some cracks to him.

Yet still, at a table with a Klingon warrior, a Bajoran resistance fighter, a genius doctor, an experienced soldier and engineer, and a trill whose symbiote has hundreds, if not more, years of knowledge, there’s a tiny, barely out of his teens, eager-beaver ensign.

I’m curious where Odo is.

Sisko builds the table up before revealing he’s enlisted them to play a baseball game against Solok’s crew.

As amusing as this scene is, I feel cheated. I wanted to see Solok explain to his all-Vulcan crew he’s enlisted them to participate in an archaic, human sport because of the extremely logical reason of- he has a feud going on with this human captain.

Later, at Quark’s, Kira, Nog, and Worf are seriously and earnestly reading up on the rules of baseball.

It’s not even ten minutes in, and I already adore this episode.

At another table, Ezri, Julian, and O’Brien are doing the same thing. I’m sceptical not one of Dax’s hosts was dragged to a baseball game or, at least, subjected to enough talking on the subject by Sisko that they’d already know more about it than the average human. Leeta and Rom come over to ask if they can try out so that they can experience some bonding time with Nog.

Interestingly, from what I read on IMBD, Max Grodénchik, who plays Rom, was a semi-professional baseball player in high school and made the choice not to go pro in order to focus on acting. Since Rom is supposed to be an inept player in this episode, Grodénchik played with his left hand; apparently, he was literally incapable of looking like a realistically bad player when he tried playing with his right.

Coming over, Quark puts down Rom. After giving him what for, Leeta leads Rom away, and determined not to take this lying down, Quark inquires, “What time are try-outs?”

In the holosuite, everyone has gathered on a baseball field, and though Sisko is cheerful, his motivating speech in this scene sucks. He informs everyone how incredibly hard the game is, empathises how little time they have, and then, goes into detail with all the advantages the Vulcans possess. Even the originally excited Jake eventually just stands there trying not to protest or facepalm.

Sisko somewhat turns things around by saying baseball is about courage, determination, and heart, and they have much more heart than any of the Vulcans.

I’m no fan of smug Solok, but I’d say his passive-aggressive challenge of Sisko, and even the fact he extended a challenge at all, is proof he does have spirit and determination towards achieving an emotional pursuit, i.e. heart.

Everyone is partnered up to play catch. Worf, Julian, Miles, and Nog do well. Quark is afraid of the ball, Kira simply isn’t experienced at catching, and Leeta is a combination of the two. Ezri isn’t really shown, and Rom doesn’t seem to understand catching the ball means reaching out when it comes near him.

Jake declares they’re in for two long, hard weeks, and Sisko makes it clear how determined he is to win.

Finally, Odo makes an appearance. Sisko asks him to be umpire. Odo suggests a holographic umpire, but Sisko insists a person, rather than a hologram, should make the calls. He continues Odo is the most impartial person he knows.

I do agree on Odo’s impartiality here, but I wouldn’t blame Solok for questioning it. After all, Odo is a loyal member of Sisko’s crew. Whereas, with a hologram, a diagnosis can be ran before and after the game to ensure no one has tampered with the program and it has no malfunctions. With no loyalty to either side, its impartiality is undisputed.

Later, in the infirmary, everyone is being treated for injuries, and O’Brien is put under medical orders not to pay. In response, Sisko makes O’Brien a coach.

There’s a brief scene of Sisko and Jake trying to figure out who to get to replace O’Brien, and the next scene has Sisko greeting a returning Cassidy with flowers. Incredibly happy to hear her cargo run for next week has been cancelled, he inquires after her throwing arm.

During the next practise session, everyone but Rom is showing improvement. In the stands, Solok is watching, and I’m not saying Vulcans shouldn’t smile if they choose to, but someone should point out to him that most of his species wouldn’t be going around with such a smug smirk on their face.

Everyone tries to encourage Rom, but eventually, losing his temper, Sisko kicks him off the team.

In Quark’s, the whole family is trying to cheer Rom up. Well, Quark is just glad to have an excuse to quit the team he only joined because his sister-in-law insulted him, but Leeta and Nog are being genuinely and sweetly supportive.

Appearing, the rest of the team tell them they’re quitting, too, as the game is supposed to be fun, and no one is supposed to be treated as Rom was.

Rom, however, refuses to let any of them quit. He insists they’re all good, and he wants to see them play.

There’s a brief scene of O’Brien introducing gum to Julian. He’s made it Scotch flavoured.

Next is a montage of everyone training and Odo practising making umpire calls.

Afterwards, Sisko and Cassidy are talking in his quarters. He explains the origin of the feud.

When he was in the academy, he went out drinking with some friends. Solok and his Vulcan friends crashed the bar, and the drunk human and sober Vulcan got into a debate over whether Vulcans were superior or not. Sisko challenged him to a wrestling match, and to show how moral he was, the sober and naturally physically stronger Solok took the drunk man up on his offer and promptly wiped the floor with him.

Rather than calling out Solok’s jerky behaviour, Sisko says he deserved what he got, and if it had ended there, it would have been fine.

However, the supposed logical man who prides himself on making moral decisions based on reason rather than emotion went around bragging about how, while sober and with a clear physical advantage, he won against a drunk, physically weaker person. He even wrote five psychology papers about their match.

None of the teachers or peer reviewers objected to the fact he was obviously taking pleasure in humiliating a person who never had a fair chance against him in the first place?

Oh, but it gets worse.

Solok continued writing papers after they graduated the academy, and each of them had an analysis of the wrestling match.

It sounds as if Solok is somewhat obsessed with Sisko.

Sisko makes Cassidy promise not to tell the others.

The next scene has her having told the others. They all agree they’re going to win the game for him.

Then, it’s time for the game. The holosuite has a crowd, and both teams stand when music plays.

Sisko suggests eliminating the crowd, and I try not to think of The Princess Bride and read anything into Solok’s response of, “If you wish.”

The game starts, and the Niners do horribly. Incidentally, their name is reasonable. The Logicians, on the other hand…

At one point, Sisko pokes Odo, and Odo ejects him from the game.

In response to this, smug Solok mockingly tips his hat to Sisko.

The Niners start to do better, and there’s a funny bit where Worf’s advice to Nog about what to do to a Logician is, “Find him and kill him!” Sisko realises how wrong he was to kick Rom off the team. He has O’Brien call for a time out so that Rom can be put in as a substitute for Jake, and then, reinstates the crowd when Rom gets ready to batter.

Julian and O’Brien realise they need to get Rom to bunt, and the whole team makes the gesture towards him, but he can’t figure out what they’re trying to convey. As this is happening, he actually does bunt, and they have to try to get him to run.

The Niners finally get one point, and I would have thought they would have gotten some before now, but my knowledge of baseball is summed up thusly: I have no knowledge of how baseball works.

Cheering, the team runs to surround Rom.

Touching Odo, Solok gets ejected.

In a touch I like, it’s the women carrying Rom rather than the men.

In Quark’s, everyone is celebrating the good time they had, and Sisko properly apologises to Rom.

Coming in, Solok tries to bring down everyone’s good mood. In response, everyone finally and happily calls him on his own unacknowledged emotionalism and jerkiness, and he leaves.

This episode was awesome.

Fin.


End file.
